We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Julia Meibos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Julia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

The most meaningful project I ever worked on was one that I never earned a dime for.

I was determined to build a creative career for myself, so I worked weekends shooting weddings while also working a full-time job. When I went through a divorce in 2020, I couldn’t run from my burnout anymore. I couldn’t show up to the career that I had worked so hard to build, and it was devastating to me. To top it all off, my camera bag was stolen from my car only a few weeks before the last wedding season I photographed. It was almost like the universe was telling me to call it quits, too.

Almost four years passed before I picked up the camera again. This time, it was just for me. The most meaningful project I ever worked on was a series of monthly creative self-portraits that I did over a year.

At first, it felt like a herculean task to drag my photo gear out of the closet and create again. But month after month, I started to feel creativity was my dance partner again. I found myself pouring my heart into each caption, and soon each installment came with a reflective essay that often felt like a public diary entry.

Even though I never earned a dime or any monumental recognition for this series, it changed my life. It helped me reconnect to myself, healing my burnout and reintroducing me to curiosity and creativity.

Julia, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Julia Meibos, and I love helping other creatives tackle their creative blocks in their marketing.

I graduated with a degree in music education, but instead of becoming a choir teacher, I took a marketing job in the middle of Idaho because it let me play with my camera. Since then, I’ve seen the struggle of the small business owner firsthand. This gave me invaluable experience when I decided to become a small business owner myself. It’s also fueled my desire to continue to help small business owners reach their people. I ha

With my background as a photographer and a marketer, I help create stunning visuals and marketing strategies for creatives that feel authentic to their brand. Authenticity is at the core of everything I do with my clients, because that’s what the world is craving most right now. And a marketing strategy that feels authentic to the artist will always beat out the gimmicky, unsustainable strategies that most streamlined marketing agencies will provide. No artist is the same, so how they show up online should be different, too. I’m here to help artists and creatives figure out what authentic marketing looks like for them.

Some examples of services that I provide on an ongoing basis:
– branded photoshoots
– social media, including reel creation
– email marketing
– strategy consultations

You can see my website here: meibostouch.com

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I’m of the opinion that everybody is “a creative.”

On a walk with a friend who’s a dentist recently, I saw her light up when she talked about her time in high school as an artist and how it helped get her into dental school. “Teeth are art, too,” she told me.

And it’s true that art is a lot more than what we typically define it as. Creativity can be a lawyer coming up with a new strategy for a complex case. It can be the mother who is helping shape the next generation – an act of creativity every day. The device you’re reading this from was somebody’s passion project, involving the culmination of thousands of human minds’ creativity.

My biggest lesson as a creative is that the best decisions are made when you lead with curiosity rather than fear. Inspired by ideas in Martha Beck’s “Beyond Anxiety,” I believe that creative problem solving happens when you are in a state of play, and that curiosity and fear can’t exist at the same time.

So the more that you lead into decisions that spark a level of curiosity, rather than making the easy decision because you’re scared, the more that you’ll find yourself in life circumstances that feel like they were meant for you.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

A key part of my journey as an entrepreneur and as a creative was reading Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.” More than a book, it’s a 12-week creativity challenge that asks two things of you:

1) journal 3 pages, first thing in the morning
2) take yourself on a weekly “artist’s date” (anything that piques your interest, but you must go alone)

I credit the daily morning pages for helping me reconnect with my creativity after a long stretch of burnout.

Other books that I really enjoyed on a similar subject:

“The Creative Act” by Rick Rubin
“Big Magic” by Liz Gilbert

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.meibostouch.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.meibos.touch/